them for their good sense.  He had the art of moulding the men who served him in his own likeness.  His capacity for business was extraordinary; you never expected it of a country gentleman.  He more than quadrupled his inheritance—­much more!’ I state it to the worthy Baronet’s honour, that although it would have been immensely to his satisfaction to see his daughter attracting the suitor proper to an heiress of such magnitude, he did not attempt to impose restriction upon my interviews with Janet:  Riversley was mentioned as my home.  I tried to feel at home; the heir of the place seemed foreign, and so did Janet.  I attributed it partly to her deep mourning dress that robed her in so sedate a womanliness, partly, in spite of myself, to her wealth.

‘Speak to her kindly of your grandfather,’ said my aunt Dorothy.  To do so, however, as she desired it, would be to be guilty of a form of hypocrisy, and I belied my better sentiments by keeping silent.  Thus, having ruined myself through anger, I allowed silly sensitiveness to prevent the repair.

It became known that my father was at Bulsted.

I saw trouble one morning on Janet’s forehead.

We had a conversation that came near to tenderness; at last she said:  ’Will you be able to forgive me if I have ever the misfortune to offend you?’

‘You won’t offend me,’ said I.

She hoped not.

I rallied her:  ‘Tut, tut, you talk like any twelve-years-old, Janet.’

‘I offended you then!’

‘Every day! it’s all that I care much to remember.’

She looked pleased, but I was so situated that I required passion and abandonment in return for a confession damaging to my pride.  Besides, the school I had been graduating in of late unfitted me for a young English gentlewoman’s shades and intervolved descents of emotion.  A glance up and a dimple in the cheek, were pretty homely things enough, not the blaze I wanted to unlock me, and absolutely thought I had deserved.

Sir Roderick called her to the library on business, which he was in the habit of doing ten times a day, as well as of discussing matters of business at table, ostentatiously consulting his daughter, with a solemn countenance and a transparently reeling heart of parental exultation.  ‘Janet is supreme,’ he would say:  ’my advice is simple advice; I am her chief agent, that is all.’  Her chief agent, as director of three Companies and chairman of one, was perhaps competent to advise her, he remarked.  Her judgement upon ordinary matters he agreed with my grandfather in thinking consummate.